iPhone 14 blocking calls on its own

Put out of your mind that it is somehow an Apple-caused fault in your phone; If you believe that you will never fix the problem. There are over a billion iPhones that don’t have this problem.

FIRST: Are there missed calls in Phone/Recents on the phone? If they are not the problem is in the network, because the calls aren’t getting to your phone. Contact your carrier: 

• check with your carrier that they don’t have a local outage, and that you didn’t have any settings that would have immediately invoked voicemail, such as call forwarding.
• check up on them at Down Detector - Crowdsourced outage checker

If they are in Recents here’s what to check:

• Check the MUTE switch on the left side of the phone, above the volume buttons. It should be towards the screen
• Check the volume setting. With the Home screen displayed, press the VOLUME UP button on the left side of the phone. It’s above the VOLUME DOWN button.
• Go to Settings/Phone. There’s a switch for Silence Unknown Callers. If it is on any calls from numbers not in your contacts will go directly to voicemail.
• Also in Settings/Phone: Make sure Call Forwarding is off.
• iOS 14 & older: Go to Settings/Do not Disturb. Turn it off if it is on. Also turn off Scheduled. With both off none of the other switches there matter.
• iOS 15: Go to Settings/Focus, and verify that all focus settings are disabled.
• iOS 16: Open the Control Center and turn off Focus.
• Go to Settings/Sounds & Haptics. Make sure there is a sound assigned to Ringtone.
• Go to Settings/Accessibility/Touch/Call Audio Routing and make sure Auto-Answer Calls is off.
• Go to Settings/Screen Time/Communications Limits. Tap each of the 2 entries and make sure both are “Everyone"
• Restart your phone-->Restart your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch - Apple Support
• Do you now, or did you ever have a call blocking app on your phone?
• If all else fails, talk your carrier into replacing your SIM card (thanks to ASC user DShelbyD)

I may have found something here. I called T-Mobile to try and replace my iPhones with Androids and got someone who thought through the problem. He looked for system records of calls that seemed to be blocked by looking for the numbers before I called them back. (Because they texted me to tell me they were being sent straight to voicemail.)

No record showed on T-Mobile of the incoming calls, even though I got voicemails on some of them.

The cell reception is not great in my area, even though it is a pretty major suburban area. He realized that my phone was using wifi calling at the times the calls I could identify as being blocked came in. I have Xfinity internet, so it isn't even the same carrier.

T-Mobile sent me a cell booster (one-time $25 charge) to improve my LTE reception, 5G does NOT work here. He told me to set that up and turn off wifi calling on both phones. It seems to be working!! I actually get 3-4 bars most of the time now.

I'm not 100% sure all the calls that were blocked were while I was at home, so we'll see if this eliminates the problem. It is definitely worth trying though!

This just happened to me again on my iPhone. I check all the settings and Focus was disabled. However, I had recently done an OS upgrade on one of my MacBooks. I checked the focus setting there, and it turned out not only to have been enabled (I didn't do that), but there is also a setting that said "Share across devices" that was enabled - I also didn't turn that on myself and no one else uses this MacBook. Som if you have other devices that shre the same Apple ID as your phone, you may want to check to ensure the Focus settings and the "Share across devices" setting are set the way you'd like them to be.

I’m in Florida and I was missing calls from someone I know in California even though they were on my contact list and they were not blocked in anyway on the Iphone so I knew there had to be something somewhere that was blocking it and I found it. The problem wasn’t the iPhone itself. I have Active Armor through my service with AT&T. And I found that the Active Armor was identifying the incoming phone number as a high severe threat of spam. I don’t know why it was labeling the phone number as spam, but it was blocking it to where it couldn’t come through at all. So in the Active Armor, I just selected to identify it as not spam and now the calls come through. Maybe this might help somebody out there that may have a similar situation and has AT&T Active Armor.

This is not a carrier issue based on the evidence it must be an Apple iOS issue , as you described above calls don't go to voicemail and texts are blocked it is a blocking issue related to the phone and got nothing to do with your carrier. iMessage uses data and can works independently. Also if you turn of Called ID then the call gets through , but is blocked when Caller ID is on.

One question I would be interested in knowing is if those effected are using Apple family ? Many of these are Husband and wife , kids and parents, its a shot in the dark but maybe worth considering ?

You could try to going back to Apple. But I think the only fix I can suggest if all else has failed is to wipe your phone and start from scratch (Do not restore from a back up as this will reinstall the bug). I know this is not an ideal solution but its worth a try .

I did discover another way this happened. I did a MacOS update on my work MacBook that was required for security compliance, and I just discovered that focus got activated on that MacBook that also enabled a "Share Across Devices" feature. So, it seems it didn't matter what I did on my iPhone. I also have a personal MacBook, two Apple Watches a couple of iPods and a couple of iPads. Do I need to check every one of these to disable this again every time one of them has an OS update? That does not seem like a user-friendly feature.

I hear you. I feel your pain. I'm emergency contact for my family 24x7 and this keeps happening. One thing I just discovered was that after an OS update on my MacBook, Focus was enabled by default and it had an option turned on that said "Share across devices." So, if you have other Apple devices you might want to check their focus settings. I can't believe that Apple isn't willing to see their part in this problem that could be putting lives at risk. I'll probably get blocked for saying that as the notion Steve Jobs had of solving for the customer seems, shall we say, become less present.

Apple care says that engineering is aware of this issue. No word on a fix. Mine will block my son's number 3 times a day. I unblock and an hour later it is blocked again without me even touching the phone. They had me wipe the phone and set up again from a backup. Problem went away for a week but now the behavior is back. It blocks him everyday, several times a day. I have followed all the tips mentioned in previous posts along with the advice of the apple care agent. No solution at present. It's crazy and so frustrating. From a VERY tech saavy iphone user.

Apple wants to reset the phone going through our iMac, we will try this week. They claim it will "clean out" the software, we are skeptical. All apps will be lost and must all be reload manually. This all started after a

update in Dec. Apple has a glitch that they apparently cannot fix.

My calls do go to voicemail, it just never shows as a missed call, or ever ring on my phone. I CAN get texts from the blocked callers.

When I talked to support they told me it was a known problem with some iPhones blocking some Androids and business lines.

The number this new one blocked last night was resolved with a reboot, so I am cautiously hopeful…not quite optimistic.

Thanks for the suggestions. I have tried them all and many more. plus multiple sessions with Apple Care Senior Advisors. No solution. I researched the SIM card replacement and that would do nothing. Numbers are not stored on the SIM. I have been sending recordings to apple engineers. Nothing works. The phone will randomly block my son's number without me touching the phone. I unblock him when I notice and then a few hours later the number is blocked again.

I’m having the exact same problem and it is so frustrating because I have tried everything to fix it. I’m going to try getting a new eSIM and number and see if it fixes it. I’m beyond angry about it. It’s been going on for a year

My phone continues to block my husband. Calls with Apple and ATT have not resolved the issue. Started after an update, first I lost his location on Find a Phone and then it started blocking him. If you wipe out your phone and restore from backup, you just copy the glicth back in. We have not seen anything that where the issue is resolved, only by going to a different brand of phone. This is an Apple issue, very frustrating as we have all Apple devices.

Hi Gee489

I realize your post was over a year ago, but since last Thursday June 27, 2024, this happened to me. I am a Verizon customer with an iPhone 14. My husband and I are on the same plan, yet my husband cannot call me. He can text me. I contacted Verizon immediately and was informed, via a chat, that The Network Repair Bureau tickets take 5-7 business days for a response/resolution. So, I am waiting. Did you ever get your phone to work properly?